Motivation: Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas and has significant implications for the global energy budget and hydrological cycle. It likely plays a key role in modulating the climate's response to external forcings through feedback processes. The accurate quantification of recent changes in water vapour content is imperative to our ability to further understand, and reduce uncertainties surrounding future climate.

The Implications of Greenhouse Gas Stabilisation for International TourismDavid Viner and Bas Amelung

This poster presents for the first time the possible impacts of greenhouse gas stabilisation policies on the major international tourism flows. Tourism is one of the largest industries in the world and a vital component for the economy of many countries. Implementation of pro-active policies at the national and international level that will attempt to stabilise the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will require substantial cuts in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. But even then, the climate system will have changed, and so will the climatic conditions of tourist destinations. The Mieczkowski Tourism Climatic Index (MTCI), constructed from observed climate data is used as an analogy for a region's potential for tourism. The results from a range of General Circulation Model (GCM) integrations forced with greenhouse gas stabilisation scenarios are then used to construct the MCTI for the future. A comparative analysis is undertaken to assess how different levels of GHG stabilisation will impact upon the major international tourism flows and to identify the critical responses.

The winter North Atlantic Oscillation in the IPCC AR4 climate simulationsTim Osborn

This poster builds upon the earlier work of Osborn et al. (1999), Ulbrich et al. (1999), Zorita & Gonzalez-Ruoco (2000), Osborn (2004) and others, in evaluating and applying climate model simulations to answer a number of questions about the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). This study expands the comparison to include many different global climate models, using simulations undertaken for the IPCC 4th assessment report. The pattern of present-day winter circulation variability is identified in each model and compared with observations. The response of the mean circulation to increasing greenhouse gas forcing is also diagnosed: in many cases this represents an increase in the strength of the westerlies across the North Atlantic, and thus corresponds with an increase in the NAO index. Other than this shift in the mean circulation, there does not appear to be a clear change in the pattern of variability under the future climate - at least not one that is consistent across the range of climate models analysed here.

March 2005 (Workshop on analyses of climate model simulations for the IPCC AR4, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA)